By: Kirsty Gillmore

At the end of 2001, I was about to start my professional career insound. I was 24 with one degree in music and a second degreein arts, a diploma in sound engineering, a bit of experience and alot of expectations. Almost fourteen years later, my career hasthrown up surprises, challenges and a whole bunch of lessons.Here are five of them.

Get out there

People hire people. Polished resumes and portfolios are great tomake a first impression, but until someone can put a face, orvoice, to your name, they won’t necessarily remember you. WhenI moved to London, U.K. in 2002 my previous boss gave medirect contact details for producers at two Soho post-production

studios. I felt awkward about phoning to arrange a meeting so I sent them my CV and hoped it wouldbe enough. It wasn’t. On paper, I looked like any other young sound school graduate, with nothing tomake me stand out from the hundreds of others in the UK. I wasn’t even applying for a specific position,so I imagine my CV got filed in the recycle bin with everyone else who didn’t bother to follow up. I wouldhave lost nothing by calling the studios and asking to meet the producers in person, and these days,you also have the option of meeting via Skype or Facetime. Even if they weren’t in a position to offerme work, at the very least, they would have known I was interested, and they may have considered mefor future positions.

It’s also worth remembering that jobs often come through your peers. In 2002, when I left the studiowhere I worked to move to London, I recommended one of my friends to take my place as a freelanceengineer. He’s now the managing director and owner of the same studio. Find where the audio peoplehang out in your area and meet them! I hear the SoundGirls.Org meetups are pretty great…

Learn how to listen

I’ve blogged previously about the importance of critical listening, but this time, I’m referring to listeningto people. When you’re out there connecting with potential employers, instead of opening with howawesome you are, ask about their needs, then consider how you can help. Similarly, when working on ajob, take the time to listen when someone approaches you with a problem, before launching in withyour solution. As a sound professional you’ll come across a lot of artists who won’t be able to translatetheir creative needs into technical language. Artists are much easier to work with when they feel theirneeds are being met – and far more likely to recommend you for future work.

Be confident, not cocky

In my first year as a pro sound engineer, I nearly got fired because I thought one of the voice directors(with twenty-plus years experience) would appreciate my input into her voice directing. I was working asa recording engineer for the dubbing session for a cartoon series. My responsibilities were to record the

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voice actors and advise if there were any technical issues with the recording. Nothing more andcertainly not offering any input into the direction without being asked. I got cocky because I hadshadowed the previous engineer and seen him offer advice to directors in sessions. The difference was,he had worked with the director for years and had established a relationship with them. As a result, hecould judge when his opinion might be welcome, and when it was not. I was a junior engineer on myfirst professional job who had only worked with the director for a couple of months. In retrospect, it waspretty arrogant of me to assume that I could immediately earn the same level of respect. Fortunately forme, the studio needed me because my hourly rate fitted the budget, and I was technically competent,despite my lack of tact. I apologised, learned my lesson and kept my job.

Don’t be put off at the first hurdle, or the tenth, or the hundredth

In 2003, I was coming to the end of my first fixed term contract at the British Broadcasting Corporation(the BBC) in London. I applied and was interviewed for, three sound jobs in different BBC departments.One was a trainee sound engineer job for which I’d spent the previous six months preparing. After twointerviews, one group test and one practical test, I got down to the last ten people out of over twothousand applicants. I didn’t get one of the trainee positions, and I didn’t get either of the other twojobs. I was devastated. Over the next year, I applied for at least three more trainee sound engineerroles and several other sound positions. I didn’t get any of them, and for some, I didn’t even get as faras an interview.

After the final interview, demoralised and with no confidence in my abilities as a sound engineer, I gaveup on audio for a bit. I was still working at the BBC but felt like a failure because (as I saw it), I hadrepeatedly failed to achieve a major career goal. I can see now that I wasn’t right for the jobs I wantedand also, that I wasn’t a failure. Each of those interviews gave me a bit more insight into my overallstrengths and weaknesses as a professional working in sound, not just as a potential radio soundengineer. Instead of closing myself off to all opportunities, I should have kept going, used my knowledgeto write better applications and give better interviews. Most importantly, I should have explored otheroptions. I wasn’t meant to be a radio sound engineer, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have a career insound.

The path you choose is the right one for your career

When I graduated in 2001, I wanted to work in post-productionsound for film and TV. Maybe if I’d met with those West Endproducer contacts back in 2002, I would be ten years into a solidcareer as a re-recording mixer for blockbuster films. I have afriend who got one of those ten positions as a trainee radio soundengineer in 2003 and has just finished mixing the BBC Proms.That could have been me if I’d been successful in one of myinterviews or kept applying for a radio sound job. Maybe if I’dstayed in New Zealand, I’d be a studio owner by now.

Are these potential future outcomes better or worse than what Ihave now? Neither – they’re just the result of different choicesthat I didn’t make. For a long time, I blamed what I saw as wrongturns in my career on not having the right training or experience

or not being given the right opportunities. Now, although I probably would have done a few thingsdifferently, I don’t look at them as wrong turns at all. They’re choices that have led me to where I amnow.

So in the end, these five lessons are less about “I wish I had known” and more a reminder of what I’velearned. My career has taken turns through music production, post-production, live sound, broadcastingand theatre and it’s not over yet. I imagine I’ll be writing another post like this to my past self in a fewyears. I look forward to the lessons I’ll learn along the way.

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